Petrozavodsk State University (PetrSU) was founded in 1940 as the Karelian-Finnish University and was renamed in 1956. During its 70-year-long history, the university has trained more than 60000 highly qualified specialists. Among its graduates there are academicians, ministers and world-famous specialists in culture and science, heads of enterprises and workers of various branches of industry of the Northwest and Northern economical regions of Russia.